Chương 87: Go Big or Uninstall

Meno barely made it through the door before he was changing clothes, logging in, and willing the connection screen to move faster. He dreaded the leaderboard before his eyes even opened inside Veyrath. GlassRook could already be level fifty. The party, breakfast, Oxy, Brad, the sponsors, the whole glittering mess of the morning could collapse into trivia if he came back and found his rank stolen.

DanceBeadGod DANCEKING salsa patch big clip barefoot meta rip Aurelia Meno ignored the last part hard enough to strain something. Meno pulled up Connect, the social media platform everyone used because everyone else used it, which was how terrible things caught on. He'd registered years ago and barely touched it. His profile picture was still a bad photo Lysa had taken at his high school graduation, almost a decade back, and for most of that time his only followers had been his mother and sister.

Then Meno checked the number.

"What the hell?" Followers: 1, 084, 221. Meno checked the commas first, because that was easier than accepting the number. His stream had been averaging more than a hundred thousand concurrent viewers, but concurrent viewers were not people. They cycled in and out. Clips spread. Algorithms chewed on embarrassment and spat it into strangers' feeds. Still, a million followers felt excessive. Then he opened Oxy's profile. Followers: 5, 612, 904.

Her latest post was the dancing clip, with Meno Varsh tagged right beneath it.

"That explains it." OXY RAID five million queen comments comments open them coward do not open Meno nearly opened the comments before survival instinct yanked his hand off the stove.

"No," he said.

"That applies a debuff immediately, and Sleepless Grip does not work in real life." For one dangerous minute, he considered changing his profile name to PrayerBeadGod, replacing the graduation photo, and pretending he was the kind of person who maintained a public-facing identity. Then he remembered Connect was a swamp that could learn his scent, and closed the settings before responsibility could spawn a quest chain. He did rewatch the dancing clip on stream, mostly to see the movement from outside his own body.

The first turn was rough. The second recovery came late. His stance drifted too high in the middle section, and if his real body were stronger, he could have held the low dip cleaner without forcing so much strain through his legs. The camera caught the exact moment Oxy's balance shifted and he corrected it, which read as intention only because nobody watching could feel the panic. Meno leaned closer.

"I could have done that better." Chat answered with its usual depth. bro critiquing dancing DPS combat brain workout arc DanceGod Oxy carried Meno did not care about getting ripped. Not really. He cared about input lag. If his real body could mimic Veyrath movement more closely, his character control might improve. The VR system translated intent through the nervous response, not buttons, which meant strength and timing were not vanity stats. They were control stats.

"Later," Meno said.

"When I have time." Chat took this as permission to resume chewing on his personal life. Engagement while he was offline was useful, even if his viewers behaved like wild dogs. Meno stepped around the Aurelia comments without warning chat off, because the moment he flinched, they would name the wound and build a shrine around it. A new chat window blinked at the edge of his UI. He checked whispers first, found them blocked, and only then realized the window was guild chat.

"Oh, right." [Guild: GraveMistake] [Online Members: 102] Meno recognized maybe ten of them. Chadculator had not wasted time. Either he was recruiting aggressively, or he had decided one thousand gold per person per month was a sacred calling. Meno wondered if the fee structure had been a mistake, then decided anyone volunteering to manage a hundred Grave Crown lunatics deserved at least the chance to suffer profitably. leader awake GlassRook blocked banner squad report we got him all night Meno frowned.

"What banner thing?" The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. He saw Nix online in the guild interface and, to his surprise, found a direct voice-call button beside her name. Guilds had useful tools after all, though basic voice was not exactly revolutionary when external programs existed. He pressed it. Nix answered almost instantly.

"Hey."

"Hello," Meno said.

"What happened? People are saying GlassRook got bannered all night."

"Oh, that." Nix had the casual tone of someone remembering a minor errand.

"We followed his party around and planted flags in any zone where he tried to farm dungeons. When he turned off his stream, we planted one in every endgame zone we could reach." Meno went very quiet.

"And Crownfall allowed that?"

"Not exactly. We got wiped a bunch of times. They joined Northspire's Red Bastion and took flags back." Nix sounded amused now.

"But defending a banner is not simple. We took them back. We had forty people on two worms. It was a mess, but enough to slow his XP until they stopped contesting." Meno opened the leaderboard. [Launch Leaderboard | Global Level Rank] [Rank 10: GlassRook_Crownfall — Level 49] [Rank 11: PrayerBeadGod — Level 48] GlassRook had still reached forty-nine, and his exact progress to fifty was hidden. Meno was only forty-eight, roughly halfway to forty-nine.

Even after an entire night of banner warfare, the gap was still dangerous.

"Thanks, I guess."

"No worries," Nix said.

"We mostly did it for fun." Then she paused, and Meno could hear the grin arrive before the words did.

"Nice dancing, by the way. Can I sign up for lessons?" NIX LESSON guild benefits dance raid Oxy vs Nix"No," Meno said.

"There are no signups. Sorry." Nix laughed, which meant he had answered too seriously.

"I was teasing. I'm logging off now. Bye."

"Bye." Meno stood in Westmarket and sorted through XP routes in his head. The raid should have reset on Monday, so killing the book was available again: guaranteed XP, possible legendary drop, clean value. It still would not solve GlassRook by itself. A bannered open-world elite route could close the gap faster if Meno found a strong enough zone, but holding a banner alone was an invitation to get dogpiled, and dragging another raid together would carve the XP into pieces.

Dungeons were not the answer unless he found the right kind of stupid. Sunken Spire had already shown him how much time high-level instances could burn with mechanics, travel, and party babysitting. First-boss farming had fallen off. Final bosses were the only part that mattered now, and only if he could kill them solo without spending half the run navigating someone's idea of clever design. That left Templefall Hollow, which was less a plan than a dare with a map marker.

Jaxxon had called the dungeon there awful because it changed every time you entered, murdering any route before it could become muscle memory. The open world might be better, but learning monster patterns and carving a speed path through a fifty-to-sixty nightmare zone would take hours. If Meno spent those hours being careful and GlassRook hit fifty first, safe would start looking a lot like throwing. Meno repaired all his gear at the NPC. [Repair Cost: 250g]"Getting pricey."

After paying, Meno cut through the Mage Tower portal to the floating Lost Temple platform. Meno entered. He kept off the trapped golden tiles, sent the still-curiously-unclassified stool ahead to bait the first boss route, to pass to the second ring. The book pack waited deeper in.

[Hostile: Kneeling Vessel | Type: Dream-Bound Humanoid | Threat: Lethal | Trait: Delayed Awakening] [Hostile: Gilded Remnant | Type: Dream-Bound Armor | Threat: Lethal | Trait: Empty Vow] [Hostile: Sleepless Page | Type: Dream-Bound Caster | Threat: Lethal | Trait: Page Curse] They were no longer question marks. Lethal was still worth a lot, but the last time he killed the book, he had been below level thirty and got the max-capped burst that launched him five levels. Now he was forty-eight.

The book should get him to forty-nine, and then the easy XP would vanish like every good thing did when Meno touched it twice.

"Okay," he said.

"Clean kill. No greed." clean kill book revenge legendary gloves 2 page curse inc stool crime The strange part was how little the fight surprised him. Meno was much stronger now. Better weapons, better armor, Chain Madness, Self-Control, Bloodwake, the ring, the axe, and all the repetition had layered into something functional. The Sleepless Page still cursed him, but he had already learned its rhythm once, and that mattered more than the threat label.

The Gilded Remnant was dangerous because reflect damage scaled, so Meno respected it just enough. The Kneeling Vessel waited, silent and awful, doing nothing until the Sleepless Page died. Meno dropped the Morgra Ritual Stand whenever he needed a cleaner landings over golden tiles. stool tech unclassified btw devs asleep Morgra platform ban chance 12%"Stop manifesting bans." The Sleepless Page finally tore apart under his new axe and dagger sequence. [Level Up | Level 49] No loot.

Meno barely had time to be disappointed before the Kneeling Vessel stopped kneeling. Light detonated across the chamber. Force hit a heartbeat later, ripping through his twenty-five percent shield like it had been decorative. Then he died. [Death Penalty: 100g] Meno respawned outside the raid entrance.

"Nice trash design." The stool still bothered him. It was too easy to abuse, too weirdly unclassified to be normal. Maybe it was tied to a hidden quest item, and fixing it would break some future chain. He opened the leaderboard again. [Rank 10: GlassRook_Crownfall — Level 49] [Rank 11: PrayerBeadGod — Level 49] Same level. Lower rank. GlassRook had hit forty-nine first, and Meno still had no way to know how close he was to fifty. He turned to chat.

"Should we risk the stool-abuse ban on the first boss?" YES NO BANNED STOOL RAID BOSS solo raid inc rank 1 gamble do it coward Meno looked at the Lost Temple portal. If he got banned now, it probably would not be permanent. Probably. He had reported the stool nonsense before, and they had ignored it. The first raid boss still had question-mark difficulty, but that might be the default for raid bosses regardless of level. If he killed it solo, capped XP was guaranteed.

How many levels that meant at forty-nine, he did not know. Maybe not five anymore. Maybe one. Maybe enough to hit fifty and take a visible board position before GlassRook. Maybe enough to jump past everyone stalled at fifty and cause a global meltdown. The safer choice had its own trouble. Finding a dungeon would take time. Learning it would take more. Templefall Hollow could eat hours before producing a stable route, and Jaxxon had already called it awful.

Open-world farming meant scouting, route building, and probably banner defense. Time was the enemy, and GlassRook was close. Meno checked viewership. Viewers: 131, 662 The raid gamble would climb higher. Running around lost in Templefall Hollow while chat called him washed would not. More importantly, the raid boss was the only path that could realistically break the board wide open. The risk was stupid, but stupid had been a working strategy more often than dignity had.

Something being unintended had never stopped him before. Meno rolled his shoulders and stepped toward the raid entrance again.

"Okay. That's it." Chat surged.

"I am soloing the first raid boss," Meno said, "even if it bankrupts me." STOOL TECH IS BACK YES DO IT BANNED ARC RAID SOLO"They had so much time to fix the stool. I told them, but they ignored me." He took one step into the raid.

"Nothing can go wrong."